When she started college in 2000, Tang Guofang didn't chose a popular major such as computer science or business administration that would have given her an edge in China's increasingly competitive job market. Instead, she enrolled in a newly launched course that attracted only a handful of students and puzzled her parents: Teaching Mandarin as a Second Language.

　　Equally vexing to them was her decision to take a job teaching Mandarin in Thailand after graduation. But for the native of Guilin, now 27 years old, working abroad for two years or more made perfect sense. 'I knew that if I stayed in China, my path in life would have been set out for me, whereas if I lived abroad, I would develop a different understanding of the world,' says Ms. Tang, who now teaches 8-year-olds at an international school near Bangkok.

　　Meet a new breed of Chinese migrant worker: young, educated and hungry for new experiences and international travel. Although the West has been churning out globe-trotting English instructors for decades, thousands of young Chinese are now discovering that teaching Mandarin is an increasingly feasible way of funding foreign adventures. They're returning to China transformed by their experiences, and with a fresh, international outlook. 'I wanted to go out of the country and have a look around the rest of the world,' says Liu Shiming, a slight 31-year-old who taught in Bulgaria's capital, Sofia, for a year in 2005 and 2006. 'For us Chinese, international travel has become easier, but it's still not that easy. So I thought teaching would be a good way to get to see the world.'

　　A few years ago, Ms. Liu and her fellow instructors might have struggled to find students. Now, they're being welcomed with open arms as more people world-wide rush to learn China's official language amid the country's expanding influence. Only about 25,000 students in American public schools were studying Mandarin in 2000. Since then, public school systems in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Houston have stepped up Mandarin instruction, doubling that number, according to estimates by the Asia Society, a New York nonprofit organization aimed at boosting U.S.-Asia ties.

　　Six-year Bangkok resident Jackie Thompson, 41, from Australia, has both of her children, Georgina, 11, and Sam, 7, take Mandarin classes. 'We're looking at 15 years down the line, when Georgina has graduated from university,' she says. 'If you have three people interviewing for a job -- one speaks Spanish, one speaks French and one speaks Mandarin -- we're quite sure that it's the Mandarin speaker who's going to get the job.'

　　Mandarin fever runs especially high in Asia, where countries are directly feeling China's economic, political and, increasingly, cultural clout. Thailand and South Korea are planning to introduce Mandarin classes in schools, and Thai officials have said they hope a third of all high school students will be enrolled in Chinese language classes within five years. In Bangkok, private Chinese language centers have mushroomed, while an increasing number of international schools are boasting about their trilingual curricula in Thai, Mandarin and English. Mandarin schools are even opening in Indonesia, where the language was banned for more than three decades as an anti-Communist move by former dictator Suharto.

　　For its part, China is happily exporting Mandarin teachers as part of a campaign to expand its 'soft power' by promoting its national language. Beijing has been upfront about its language ambitions, saying it wants 100 million Mandarin students world-wide by 2010, compared to the current estimate of 40 million. To meet those goals, the government's National Office for Teaching Chinese, known as the Hanban, has since 2004 opened language and cultural centers called Confucius Institutes in more than 30 countries and sent overseas more than 2,000 volunteer teachers, with the largest numbers going to the U.S. and Thailand.

　　Young Chinese are heeding the call in droves to convert the world to Mandarin. Last year alone, the Hanban received about 11,000 applications for its volunteer program (teachers receive a stipend of $400 to $600 a month), of which about 1,000 were accepted, says Xue Hualing, the program's director. More universities are offering Teaching Mandarin as a Second Language as a major, says Mr. Xue. And young Chinese are also filling jobs teaching Mandarin at private schools and centers throughout Southeast Asia. Liu Xiaoying, a mainland emigre who runs a Mandarin school in downtown Bangkok, says she's seen an increase. 'When the school started 10 years ago, it was pretty hard to find teachers. Now I've got these young Chinese coming to me,' she says. 'They hear Thailand is a nice, relaxed place, look it up on the Internet, and then decide to come here to check it out.' While there are some communication problems between non-Thai-speaking teachers and their students, the teachers say, the language barrier is typically no worse than for other foreign-language teachers.

　　Many of these young people view language teaching as a way of seeing the world. Others think foreign experience will make their resumes stand out. Some Mandarin teachers in Thailand use their time abroad to attend graduate school, which would be too competitive to get into at home. And still others are fleeing from the daily grind of an office job. 'Many of my classmates, after we graduated, all they did was just move on to work for a company. I think this sort of work is a lot more interesting because when you're teaching a language, you're teaching culture at the same time,' says Ariel Wang, a 25-year-old from Shanghai who teaches 7-year-old kids in Bangkok.

　　Unlike their Western counterparts, who might congregate around pubs and other night spots after work, many of these young Chinese language teachers lead austere lives overseas because of their determination to save money and uncertainty about navigating a foreign country on their own. Ms. Tang admits that her social life centers on her fellow teachers. 'Life at home for my friends (in China) does seem richer, more varied,' she says.

　　Despite their circumspect lives, the teachers do inevitably gain new perspectives about themselves, their culture and their country that they later bring home. Ms. Liu, who taught in Bulgaria, says she had no idea that the Chinese were considered loud until she and her colleagues drew disapproving looks at restaurants in Sofia. 'Many of the shortcomings of our culture and the way we carry ourselves, it's magnified when you go abroad,' she says.

　　Jin Junfang, who spent a year in Connecticut in 2005, says her family was startled when she announced, after returning from the U.S., that she was going to cut off all financial support to her son when he turned 18. Ms. Jin, 36, says she reached that decision -- in reality a more extreme method of encouraging filial independence than many American parents would consider -- after long discussions about parenting with her host family in Connecticut and her own observations of American teenagers. 'My family and friends find it shocking, but I want my son to be independent,' she says. 'In China, they always teach children to be careful and parents support their children their whole lives. But in America, they teach you to do things by yourself no matter what the risk.'

　　Some teachers take note of political differences between China and other countries. 'Americans care more about politics than Chinese. They care more about the outside world than the Chinese,' says Zhou Zhichang, a 26-year-old Beijing native who also taught in Connecticut, in her case during the first half of 2006. Ms. Zhou recalls her amazement over a social studies teacher at her Connecticut school who drove six hours to Washington, D.C., in order to take part in a demonstration about Darfur, the war-torn region of Sudan. 'Few Chinese would care about another country,' she says. 'We're wrapped up in our personal matters like getting a job, finding a home and getting married.'

　　Asked what she thought of the American teacher, Ms. Zhou says he was 'a hero.' But she quickly adds, 'Not that we could do the same thing in China. We're not at that point yet. We're still a developing country.'

　　當(dāng)2000年填報(bào)高考志愿時(shí)，唐國芳沒有選擇能讓她在中國競爭日益激烈的就業(yè)市場獲得一些優(yōu)勢的電腦或工商管理等熱門專業(yè)。相反，她選擇了一個(gè)新開設(shè)的、報(bào)考學(xué)生不多同時(shí)也讓她的父母大惑不解的專業(yè)──對(duì)外漢語教學(xué)。

　　同樣讓她父母感到不解的是，她決定在畢業(yè)后接受到泰國教習(xí)漢語的工作。但是對(duì)這位今年27歲的來自廣西桂林的年輕人來說，到國外工作兩年非常有意義。她說：“我知道我要是留在國內(nèi)，我的人生道路就已經(jīng)有人給我設(shè)定好了，可我要是到國外生活，我會(huì)對(duì)世界有不同的理解。”唐國芳如今在曼谷附近的一所國際學(xué)校教一群8歲大的孩子學(xué)習(xí)漢語。

　　中國新一代的赴外工作人員大都年輕且受過良好的教育，他們迫切希望到國外游歷，獲得新的經(jīng)歷。盡管西方國家向全球各地派遣英語教師已有幾十年的歷史，但數(shù)以千計(jì)的中國年輕人發(fā)現(xiàn)，到國外教授漢語現(xiàn)已成了越來越可行的獲得海外經(jīng)歷的途徑。來日回國時(shí)，他們也會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn)，海外的經(jīng)歷讓他們脫胎換骨，擁有了全新的國際視角。今年31歲的劉世茗（音）2005年至2006年期間在保加利亞首都索非亞從事過一年的教學(xué)工作。她說她想走出中國，看看外面的世界。對(duì)中國人來說，到國外旅行已經(jīng)變得比以前容易了，但還沒有到易如反掌的程度，因此她覺得到國外教學(xué)是一個(gè)了解世界的好辦法。

　　幾年前，劉世茗和她的同事或許要費(fèi)盡九牛二虎之力才能招來學(xué)生，但現(xiàn)在，隨著中國影響的不斷擴(kuò)大，全球各地有越來越多的人希望學(xué)習(xí)漢語，教漢語的教師也日益受到人們的歡迎。2000年時(shí)，美國的公立學(xué)校中只有約25,000名學(xué)生學(xué)習(xí)漢語。那以后，芝加哥、紐約、費(fèi)城、洛杉磯和休斯敦等地的公立學(xué)校都加強(qiáng)了漢語教學(xué)，根據(jù)紐約非營利組織亞洲協(xié)會(huì)(Asia Society)的估計(jì)，學(xué)漢語的學(xué)生數(shù)量迄今已經(jīng)增加了一倍。

　　今年41歲的澳大利亞人杰姬?湯姆森(Jackie Thompson)已在曼谷生活了六年。她的兩個(gè)孩子──11歲的喬吉娜(Georgina)和7歲的薩姆(Sam)──都在學(xué)習(xí)漢語。她說，他們的著眼點(diǎn)是15年以后，那時(shí)喬吉娜該大學(xué)畢業(yè)了。如果到時(shí)候有三個(gè)人同時(shí)爭一份工作，一個(gè)講西班牙語、一個(gè)講法語，而另一個(gè)講漢語，那么最終得到這份工作的肯定是講漢語的那個(gè)人。

　　漢語熱在亞洲尤其火爆，這里的國家都會(huì)直接感受到中國的經(jīng)濟(jì)、政治影響以及越來越多的文化浸染。泰國和韓國都計(jì)劃在學(xué)校中開設(shè)漢語課程。泰國官員表示，他們希望在五年內(nèi)能有三分之一的高中學(xué)生學(xué)習(xí)漢語。在曼谷，私立漢語培訓(xùn)中心如雨后春筍，而越來越多的國際學(xué)校也在大力宣傳他們同時(shí)開設(shè)的泰、英、漢三語種教學(xué)。甚至印度尼西亞也開設(shè)了漢語學(xué)校，該國前反共獨(dú)裁者蘇哈托(Suharto)當(dāng)政30多年的時(shí)間里一直禁止人們使用漢語。

　　就中國而言，它也愿意輸出漢語教師，通過推廣漢語提升其“軟實(shí)力”。中國政府在這方面表現(xiàn)出了勃勃雄心，聲稱到2010年時(shí)要使全球各地學(xué)漢語的學(xué)生數(shù)量達(dá)到1億人，目前的數(shù)量據(jù)估計(jì)在4,000萬上下。為了實(shí)現(xiàn)這個(gè)目標(biāo)，國家漢語國際推廣領(lǐng)導(dǎo)小組辦公室(National Office for Teaching Chinese, 簡稱：國家漢辦)從2004年起在30多個(gè)國家開設(shè)了被稱為孔子學(xué)院(Confucius Institute)的語言文化中心，向海外派遣了2,000多名教師志愿者，其中前往美國和泰國的人數(shù)最多。

　　中國年輕人對(duì)向世界傳播漢語的號(hào)召作出了熱烈的響應(yīng)。國家漢辦志愿者中心主任薛華領(lǐng)說，僅在去年，國家漢辦的志愿者計(jì)劃就收到了大約11,000份申請(qǐng)（教師每月獲得400至600美元的津貼），并從中選擇了約1,000人。薛華領(lǐng)稱，越來越多的大學(xué)都開設(shè)了對(duì)外漢語教學(xué)專業(yè)。中國年輕人也在東南亞地區(qū)的私立學(xué)校和教學(xué)中心從事著教授漢語的工作。在曼谷市區(qū)開設(shè)了一家漢語學(xué)校的中國大陸移民劉曉英（音）說，教師數(shù)量比以往增多了。她說，10年前開設(shè)這座學(xué)校時(shí)，很難找到教師。現(xiàn)在這些年輕人加入到了教師的行列中。他們聽說泰國是一個(gè)很美、很休閑的地方，就在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上查找資料，然后就決定來這里體驗(yàn)一下。這些教師說，盡管不會(huì)講泰語的教師與學(xué)生間存在一些交流問題，但這種語言障礙通常不會(huì)比其他外語教師更嚴(yán)重。

　　在這些年輕人中，有許多都將傳授語言視為了解世界的一個(gè)途徑。也有人認(rèn)為海外經(jīng)歷將會(huì)提高他們簡歷的含金量。在泰國的一些漢語教師利用在海外的時(shí)間參加研究生學(xué)習(xí)，這會(huì)令他們歸國后更具競爭力。還有一些人是借此逃離繁瑣的辦公室日常工作。25歲的Ariel Wang來自上海，在曼谷給一群7歲大的孩子上漢語課，她說，她的許多同學(xué)在畢業(yè)后都進(jìn)入了公司工作，而她認(rèn)為這種工作更有趣，因?yàn)樵诮淌谡Z言的同時(shí)也是在傳授文化。

　　海外的西方教師工作之余多喜歡聚集在酒吧或其他夜生活場所，而與他們不同的是，多數(shù)年輕的中國漢語教師都在海外過著儉樸的生活，因?yàn)樗麄儧Q心攢錢，而自己在國外也讓他們感到不穩(wěn)定。唐國芳承認(rèn)，她的社交生活主要就是與同事在一起。她說，她在國內(nèi)的朋友們好像更富有，生活也更為豐富多彩。

　　盡管這些教師們過著淡泊的生活，但他們注定會(huì)獲得對(duì)自身、對(duì)他們的文化和國家的新的認(rèn)識(shí)，并最終帶回國內(nèi)。在保加利亞教學(xué)的劉世茗說，她以前并不了解別人認(rèn)為中國人太愛喧嘩，直到她和同事在索非亞的一家餐館吸引了其他人不滿的目光后才認(rèn)識(shí)到這一點(diǎn)。她說，當(dāng)走出國門后，自己文化中的許多不足和為人處事的方式就會(huì)變得更加突出。

　　廣告金俊芳（音） 2005年在美國康涅狄格州生活過一年。她說，從美國回國后，她宣布將在兒子長到18歲以后取消對(duì)他的所有經(jīng)濟(jì)資助。聽到她這么說，她的家人都驚呆了。今年36歲的金俊芳說，這種培養(yǎng)孩子獨(dú)立性的做法實(shí)際上比許多美國父母做得還要極端，但她是跟她在康涅狄格寄宿的美國家庭進(jìn)行了長時(shí)間的討論和結(jié)合自己對(duì)美國青少年的觀察后做出這個(gè)決定的。她說，她的家人和朋友都對(duì)此感到吃驚，但她希望她的孩子能夠獨(dú)立。在中國，家長們總是教育孩子們要處處小心，父母們會(huì)管自己的孩子一輩子。但是在美國，不管有怎樣的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)，父母都會(huì)告訴孩子們自己動(dòng)手。

　　一些人注意到了中國與其他國家的政治差異。2006年上半年來到康涅狄格教學(xué)的北京人周志暢（音）說，美國人比中國人更關(guān)心政治，他們比中國人更關(guān)心外面的世界。她回憶道，在她工作的康涅狄格這所學(xué)校，有一位社會(huì)學(xué)教師開了六個(gè)小時(shí)的車趕到華盛頓，就是為了參加有關(guān)蘇丹達(dá)爾富爾問題的一場示威，這令她感到非常驚奇。她說，很少有中國人會(huì)關(guān)心另一個(gè)國家。我們都在為個(gè)人的事奔波忙碌，如找工作、找房子、結(jié)婚，等等。

　　在問到她對(duì)這位美國教師的看法時(shí)，周志暢說，他是一位“英雄”。但她很快又說：“我倒不是說我們?cè)谥袊�也能這么做。我們還沒到那一步。我們還是發(fā)展中國家�！�